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Thursday, 25 July 2013

I love Photoshop Disasters in general, but some of them are particularly giggle-inducing. Some poor Japanese schoolboy is going to get totally freaked out by this young lady some day soon.

Also found via Photoshop Disasters: really bad ads, on Buzzfeed. Some of these are so bad they're almost...good. Who says dishonest "photography" is no fun?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Alex Vesey: "Don't know the origin of this image, but now is the season of spooky stories
and ghost images in Japan. Popular magazines show photos of strange
faces appearing where they should not be, people with missing arms, etc.
Prime time TV offers similar fare with young celebs screaming and
running around after 'encounters' with spirits. (Think 'Ghost Hunters'
crossed with an MTV reality program). For some reason, many of these
programs focus on schools at night—guess the homework or the boredom
has created lots of lingering teen angst and frustration.
This shot falls right into that category. Here are some other examples."

Mike replies: You really think that's what it is? That would be fascinating, but less funny.

Saturday, 13 July 2013

Kawika Singson says of this photo, "That's real lava, real flames, and it was really hot! I could stand the heat only for a few seconds."

He adds, "As an avid photographer, I will go to the center of the earth to get the best shot!" Um, careful with those figures of speech...as I understand it, one of the dangers of walking on hot lava is falling through the crust, like falling through ice.

P.S. I have to say I don't trust photographs any more. This looks real, and he says it's real, but I still wouldn't be truly shocked if it's not real.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Kevin Purcell: "Note the photo is taken on pahoehoe flow. About 10 minutes after the lava has flowed, the surface is hard enough to support a human's weight. But even just-cooled flows aren't hot enough to radiatively ignite paint.

Now here is the rule for determining how hot lava is. We have used pyrometers (devices that can measure the temperature of whatever it is pointed out) many times to cross fields, until we learned how to make the same judgment without the pyrometers. For the most part, the hottest temperature you can cross safely (assuming proper boots and denim long pants) is about 800°F to 850°F. Above that temperature your body will instantly tell you that it is too hot (this is one reason lava is fairly safe—your body will keep you away from anything too hot). In general, 850°F is probably the highest I have ever crossed, and when I got to the other side I said wow, that was too hot. Most of the crossings we make are in the 600 to 700°F range. At 600°F your boots will get very hot, and may smell a bit, but will not smoke. Above 700°F your boots will smoke when they hit the lava and will often leave a slight outline of the sole where you step (this is caused by water vapor between your boot and the lava). Anything hotter and your feet simply won't let you go.

"Note the comment about boots smoking (not bursting into flame) at a temperature that was at the top end of managable.

"Geologists do sample pahoehoe without special clothing (you need reflective gear for a'a) with a hammer at arms length, though a balaclava and glove are good. It's hot but nothing bursts into flame.

"In the photo the man is wearing sneakers, not boots (a very poor choice for anyone experienced on the lava fields), no gloves (better to burn or rip your gloves than your hand if you have to put your hand down to stop a fall), and camo pants rather than, say, denim jeans (which are thicker and tougher).

"So where is the contact sheet for this shoot? The 'after the event' shots? The close-ups of the sneakers? The close-ups of the tripod?"

Alex S: "So he doused his tripod and shoes in lighter fluid to get the shot. Who hasn't?"

Ctein: "Falling through the pahoehoe crust into hot lava in Hawaii is not one of the dangers you need to be concerned about. In fact, once the crust has cooled enough that you can walk on it without special protective gear, it's much more dangerous walking on a cold, empty lava crust.

"When the tube is still filled with lava (and that's what you're walking on, the outer shell of a lava tube) the molten rock supports the tube. Once the tube is empty, it is like walking on unsupported ice of uncertain thickness. You want to be very careful where you step, because if you break through that glassy rock, you can lacerate yoursel badly.

"I suppose it is conceivable that in the very early stages of a hot lava tube, the crust might still be thin enough that there would be risk walking on it. But you could never do that without special garb. Remember that the underlying lava glows bright cherry red in direct sunlight—it's three times hotter in absolute temperature than your kitchen oven at its hottest. When the crust is really thin, it's way, way too hot to walk on. Even a several-day-old 'mature' crust over a lava-filled tube can be at 120+°F. You don't wear crêpe-soled shoes on active lava fields, because if you stand in one place for a few minutes the soles will melt!

"Furthermore, the whole field is like that; it's one giant radiant heater! That's what those protective metallized suits are all about. And it's not just the ground that's hot, it's also the air you're walking through. The biggest dangers in traversing an active lava field in Hawaii, along with fumes and getting cut off by a flow that sneaks behind you and blocks your exit path, are hyperthermia and dehydration, even if it's an overcast and cool day off of the field."

Tim Bray: "I've been there and it's hard to believe a human could tolerate that."

Mike replies: That's a great piece, Tim, thanks very much for the link. You really make the reader feel like they were there with you.

Monday, 24 June 2013

I need to read more blogs. I tend to get obsessive about putting together my own little site, and I neglect to regularly visit other ones. The Universe out there is maturing now, and there is some really good stuff on offer. I need to check in with these places, make regular rounds. Too much good stuff to risk missing it.

Roger Cicala's Lensrentals.com blog is one I should make a point of visiting—every time I go there I'm impressed and enlightened, and sometimes amused and entertained as well. My experiences with their business have been excellent, and their blog is a big bonus. Where else can you go to see a Touit dismantled, with expert commentary?

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Friday, 21 June 2013

Phonecamera: If the common garden camera-in-a-smartphone is a "cameraphone," then the new hybridized wonder from Samsung, the world's largest company that makes cameras*, must be a phonecamera—because it's turned backwards, or inside-out, from the normal emphasis. Instead of being a smartphone that happens to have a camera in it, it's a camera that allows you to dispense with your smartphone. I've got to admit I like it when companies think outside of the little polycarbonate box. It's called the Galaxy NX, and although you can't quite get one yet, it's apparently going to be an actual buyable product soon.

Winograd is grand: Geoff Dyer, one of the more interesting writers on photography in recent years, has published a shortish exhibition review about Garry Winogrand in the London Review of Books. I haven't read it yet, but if author and subject align normally it should be worth our attention.

And Jacob Mikanowski writes about Winogrand at The Awl. Did you know Winogrand wasn't born with that name? His name was originally Winograd. The "grand" was a misspelling that he adopted—with a sort of nihilistic shrug, one imagines.

The book is here.
Oddly, some Amazon pages, including this one, recently had formal notices that essentially said Amazon's right hand didn't know what its left one was doing. Everything seems to be back in order with this particular book now, however.

The Game Room of the White House in 1992. In Harry Truman's time it was a guest bedroom. Photo courtesy White House Museum

America's most famous billiards addict besides me: Abraham Lincoln. Seriously. He had a Brunswick pool table in his White House and played frequently—often alone, using it as time to think in peace.

I'm using that excuse, by the way. Yeah, that's it—I'm thinking.

Steidl on Netflix: Speaking of books, as I was above, there's a documentary on Netflix about the indefatigable Gerhard Steidl and how he makes books. Again, I haven't seen this yet (I probably should watch it, given our recent ambitions), but (again) if the stars line up as expected....

Wha...? Who...? The biggest change in photography in the last twenty years is not film to digital, it's black-and-white to color. Turns out some photographers you'd never suspect were secretly shooting color when it decidedly wasn't cool. That even includes René Burri, if this recent book from Phaidon is to be credited. Broken record: haven't seen it myself.

The Worst Thing Ever said about photographs is that they should stand alone without captions. I defy you to read twenty random captions to Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York and tell me captions don't matter. Saying pictures should stand alone is like saying that to really appreciate people you should never let them speak or listen to them....

Pioneering female photojournalist: Helen Brush Jenkins, who had a reputation for getting the shot no matter what, has died at the age of 94. That's her below with one of our non-pool-playing Chief Executives (I like the shadow of the guy in the hat).

Here's a very interesting thing: it's the original magazine article, written for Fortune but never published, from which the Walker Evans / James Agee collaboration Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was created. What John Jeremiah Sullivan, writing at Bookforum, calls "the first thing to say about it" is that "Fortune was crazy not to run it. It was a failure of nerve, and a lost
chance at running one of the great magazine pieces from that era." Now in book format, this could well be headed for my shelves and my reading list.

My reading right now? Jane Austen. Although I'm reading mostly criticism. I'm reading right now about the history of her likeness, a fascinating and involved tale. What the world would give to have a photograph. Or maybe it's more interesting that we don't.

It strikes me as a stunning tragedy—I hate that word, but yes, stunning—that "our Jane" died so terribly young. We should today be talking about Pride and Prejudice as the masterpiece of her early period...after which came her middle period...and then her late. Like Beethoven. Authors are the inverse of athletes—they mature, and often give us their best in later life. Glenn Gould notoriously said that Mozart died too late, but nobody who reads novels could ever say that about Austen. What masterpieces we never had.

There is no want of good editions. I'm curious both about the Penguin Classics (exotically—for Penguin—hard bound), as well as the annotated and illustrated editions (of only some of the titles, though) from Belknap. A bit big for the hand, but I'll bet especially good for second-pass reading.

Scandalous: Shouldn't this be a scandal? Or are we all just too jaded to be shocked by co-optation any more? Or—? I don't have time to look into this. You might.

[UPDATE: The link above appears to be working only sporadically—either that or the site got swamped. It is, or was, an article that alleges that Sebastiao Salgado's latest environmentally-inspired project, "Genesis," and his efforts to reforest his family's property, are being supported in part by a company that's one of the worst polluters in Brazil. —Ed.]

Yes, I know that NEX's lens choices are limited, but you could put this new pancake on one and have room to crop, what with all those pixels. It's a very good (very consistent) little lens that's getting great reviews. I'm extremely (even "insanely") happy with my own NEX—a lesser NEX—but this combo for these dollars (or euros or pounds or yen or...) just looks incredibly tasty from where I stand. People just really love the NEX-7. And some very experienced people, too—Kirk Tuck has seventeen of them. (Something like that.)

The other really cool camera o' the moment would have to be this one, I would think.

The Touits Are Here! The Touits Are Here!! No, not the redcoats. But sound the alarm: Mike is in peril. I'm craving that Touit Twelve, in a bad, jonesing kind of way. I just had to do some real estate photography, of all things, and it occurred to me that I only use a superwide about 3% of the time, but on those occasions, I seriously do need one. If you kind readers would just buy about 400 Touits** though this link, then I could afford one of my own. I really, really, really want one. But I have already used up my photographic budget through 2015.

• • •

TOP is off tomorrow, as usual. If you're bored, I hope you can explore some of the above links.

**Actually the real number would be about 18. Slightly less implausible.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Mark Alan Miller: "The Winogrand retrospective was great fun. The viewers (me included) were all starting conversations in front of the pictures as we delightedly pointed out charming/funny/gorgeous/weird details. It was such fun, very unlike your typical museum show. The late pictures they'd selected were still good, but they also had displayed some contact sheets from various eras, including ones he had marked. The newer sheets were weird, with dozens of essentially identical shots of uninteresting subjects. They did find some good shots, but it's hard to tell if they were just chance. And even those are technically a bit off. He was never a meticulous technician, but the late pictures are even more careless. And those are the good ones.

"His work from the later sixties on is somehow a bit sour, as if he wasn't getting many laughs out of the human comedy. Suburbia didn't seem to suit him very well. The empty streets have too many cars and not enough people. I love cars, too, but he only rarely made them interesting."

Thursday, 23 May 2013

The photo sharing site Flickr, sometimes written with a lower-case "f," which seems to be used by a disproportionate number of the more talented of the many photographers in the world, has changed its look and organization. As you might expect, its users have...er, some opinions about that.

Go ahead, see if you can read that whole comment thread. According to one estimate, more than 20,000 comments so far.

The way I see it, the problem with things like this is that artistic people take into account the interface when they're deciding how to organize and present their work. If you change it, it's not so much that the change is bad, it's that it doesn't appear like the person whose pictures you're looking at expected it to appear. (Shades of what I was talking about the other day regarding shuffled-up software user interfaces.) It's one advantage of paper publication...the "published" work is at least set into a semi-enduring form that can't be recast willy-nilly by others later. Clearly, however, books are no longer the primary way photographers share their work and look at the work of others.

Mike(Thanks to Bob Blakley)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Ben Syverson: "My issue with the Flickr redesign is that the photos have no room to breathe...it looks like a contact sheet, whereas the old design was closer to a gallery wall. The eye needs that 'white space' (not necessarily white) for visual relief, which is why we started putting room between words and paragraphs hundreds of years ago.

"I get why you would use this design for mobile devices, where you need to maximize screen utilization, but it's just overkill on the desktop. I have a feeling the idea came from an engineer rather than a designer, which would fit the historical pattern of horror vacui as an 'outsider art' impulse.

"One great quote from the Horror vacui Wikipedia article: 'There is an inverse relationship between horror vacui and value perception.' That pretty much sums it up. It's hard to appreciate an individual image when it's crammed into a mosaic of 20 other photos."

Monday, 18 March 2013

Ice with a tail: Take a look at these three pictures of the Comet Pan-STARRS over the skies of Kansas, by razor2277 on Dpreview. (Thanks to Rick for the tip.) I'm going to make a WAG and say that this comet will be better documented than any in history so far...so improved, and so much more ubiquitous, are our methods of image capture nowadays. These were taken with a NEX-5.

Dead not forgotten: Carps Carpenter found this lovely 1966 Grateful Dead concert on the Internet Archive, there for the streaming. Allegedly from Avalon Ballroom on 16 September of that long-ago year, although there is some dispute about that. A veritable time capsule. And I trust those of you who like licorice have perused this? (Explanation of that cryptic reference at the link.)

From a group of 78 carte-de-visite portraits of Chinese subjects by various photographers, 1860s–70s. Sold for $60,000 at the February 26th auction at Swann Galleries.

Will No One Buy a Forlorn Weston? The indefatigible and elusive Richard B. Woodward writes, and, having writ, moves on. Funny where he turns up. Here he surfaces on Artinfo (from Art+Auction) writing about the photography art market in the light of the savior pre-Christmas Sotheby's show, in an article called "Zooming in on the Trends That are Reshaping the Market for Photography" (not a very Woodwardian title; I smell an editor). (Chambers sent this in. Thanks.)

Without too much talk surrounding: Quietly continuing an expansive career as one of the most interesting of American photographers, Nicholas Nixon has given a pellucid, pinpoint interview to Ahorn Magazine. One could wish the questions a little shorter and the answers a little longer perhaps. Ken Tanaka told me about this.

By the bye, I recommend Family Pictures
in the "Photographers At Work" series as a good starting point if you're not familiar with Nick Nixon's work. Here's a man who is due for a retrospective book, edited by someone outside his circle. Are Keith F. Davis and Richard B. Woodward available, by any chance?

The best book possible: Speaking of Ahorn Magazine, that's where Eric Marth's comparison of the image quality in all the various editions of American Photographs was published. Many readers emailed to tell me about this! It was a TL;DR for me, but then, I have two editions of the book already and already-formed opinions on the matter. Eric's article is called "Printing American Photographs." The current iteration of the book is still available here. (And here's the U.K. link.)

Nikkor 28mm ƒ/1.8G verdict: This might be out of place in this post, but I should have added it to my recent post about this lens and it has to go somewhere. Full-frame 28mm's of this speed (I mean ~ƒ/2) have a long and storied history, with many stellar offerings providing a plethora of high points along the way. The one I coveted in the 1980s* cost no more in absolute dollars than Nikon's newest, which means, when you factor for inflation, that this one is a good value. It's an excellent lens with many fascinating foibles, none of them fatal. Keeps me interested. Historically I'd give it a solid B+, and, by today's risen standards, still a B–. (I'm a strict grader, so B is high for me.) Here's the link to the lens; "Instant Savings" of $100 are currently in effect.

Photo: Landingfield

Picture elements revealed: For those of you with a digi-phototechnical bent, here's a cool thing. Landingfield, an astrophotography site, looks deep into innerspace with a number of photomicrographs of a CMOS digital camera sensor. The article is called "Peeping into Pixel." This is the equivalent of understanding the chemical constituents of a plating-out developer—i.e., not pertinent to photographs. But strangely fascinating anyway! (This one came from Ken T. too.)

Hold that pose: This is a weird one—the photographer who took the famous (well, American sports-world famous) picture of Desmond Howard imitating the Heisman statue is suing Howard, among others, for using the picture without permission. Howard, understandably, is saying "Huh?!? It's a picture of me." Of course, as we all know, Desmond doesn't have, uh, a leg to stand on...legally. But this might be the most direct clash between intuitive ideas of fairness and copyright legality we've come across.

Desmond Howard. Photo by Brian Masck.

Ironically, we have the right to show the photo here. The lawsuit means it's news; thus we can publish it under Fair Use. But I don't have the right to show a picture of the Heisman Trophy that the post mimics, because, for any given picture, I'd simply be using the content of the picture as an illustration.

Thanks to Steve Rosenblum for this.

It's coming, and we're watching: Dewi Lewis, of Dewi Lewis Publishing, tells me they're still planning a reprint of Pentti Sammallahti's Here Far Away, our Photobook of the Year 2012, but that there's no ETA (estimated time of arrival) yet. I'm still on sentinel duty, hoping I won't miss it when it happens.

Famous last words: "My computer problems are solved." Knock on my wooden head, and hope I won't have to eat those words. But everything went well. AppleCare was stellar. My AppleCare contract lasts until next February 3rd, which means I will be getting a new computer on that date. AppleCare is a must-have accessory, if you ask me.

Thanks to everyone who ever sends in tips! I appreciate them all, even the duplicates and the ones I don't end up using. Thanks to one and all.

Mike

*By the way, I never once heard that lens called the "Hollywood 28" back in the day. And I would have. I think that's a recent Internet meme rather than legitimately an historical nickname.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Jamie Pillers: "Thanks for the link to the Nicholas Nixon interview. I love hearing what
rumbles around inside the head of someone working passionately, like
Nixon."

Tom Kwas: "...As a 'Zeiss-o-phile' and Contax user in the '80s and '90s, I never heard that lens called a 'Hollywood' either, by anyone, anytime, and I even met the reps and talked to them extensively about the system. I also never saw the thing, as the ƒ/2.8 was half the size and the difference in price was not worth the money...I also wasn't a 28mm 'guy,' and owned the very nice 25mm and ditto 35mm, both ƒ/2.8's, both wonderful...as for 'Hollywood,' that's some Internet smoke-blowin' there...."

hugh crawford: "The NYC area is pretty much all clouds or rain or snow for the next 10
days, pretty much the same as it was for Hale-Bopp in '97. The last time I put
film in my Nikon F was for Hale-Bopp, when a friend and I got so
frustrated that we drove for a few hours on the Interstate hoping for a
break in the allegedly scattered clouds. The film is still in the
camera. Maybe Pan-STARRS will still be happening when I'm in California
on the 29th."

Armand: "I have the Nikkor 28mm ƒ/2.8 AIS and I love it. Great lens for pixel peeping I suppose. I am not sure how it compares to the Nikkor 28mm ƒ/1.8G."

Mike replies: That lens is one of the high points of Nikon lens design and manufacture. It is highly corrected with eight elements and a floating group. It was introduced at just the right time: in 1981, Nikon was indisputably the no. 1 cameramaker for pros, had some very talented lens designers, was optimizing its lenses for performance and robust build quality rather than price...and it was just before the "zoom era" really got going, and the slower 28mm was still a commercially very important lens specification. (In the '70s, the 28mm ƒ/2.8 prime was sort of the default wide angle for most SLR photographers. Lenses of that specification sold by the boatload and every cameramaker and independent lensmaker offered a version of it. By the time the AF lens came along, that ship had sailed, and the AF lens was actually based on the cheap "budget" E-Series lens.)

Your lens was a particularly successful design. It's small and light, handles well, and is particularly well balanced in performance, with all aberrations well controlled, very little distortion, good sharpness across the field, and balanced performance across the aperture range. And it's well coated. A premium camera lens in every respect, usability not least. The only possible cavil is that the out-of-focus rendition is not quite as good as that of the AI, but even that's not bad—and with a WA you seldom see much of it anyway. (And the AF-S ƒ/1.8G is not stellar in that respect either.) And a few samples could show decentering.

Not only can you still find the lens used fairly easily, it is also one of the few manual-focus AIS lenses you can still buy new from Nikon. The price is a bit higher now than it has been historically, but it's still a good bargain considering what you're getting. The lens works well on Nikon DSLRs in manual and aperture-preferred modes if your eye is up to focusing manually.

My advice: hang on to that.

Carl Blesch: "So if I gave you a link to a photo I shot of a Heisman trophy in a
showcase at Ohio State's student union, you couldn't post it here
because that violates copyright? Does that mean I'm violating copyright
by posting my photo, taken in a public place of an openly displayed
item, on my photo sharing web site? Is this like the story I once heard
of the cypress tree at Big Sur being copyrighted, so no one is allowed
to take pictures of it or show those pictures to anyone?"

The Heisman Trophy. Photo by Carl Blesch.

Mike replies: No, then I could probably post it—as I have done, above—because then I have a reasonable expectation that I have your permission to do so. (But see below.)

The point of copyright is that you own your photo. The people who own the Heisman trophy don't own your photo of it, just like Desmond Howard doesn't own Brian Masck's photo just because it's a photo of him. You can do what you want with your own photograph.

There are exceptions, however. "Fair Use" allows me to publish pictures owned by others without their permission, but only under certain conditions—if I'm commenting on or critiquing the picture or if it's news, mainly. It does not allow me to use pictures belonging to other people just because I want to. So I can't steal your picture and use it in my advertising, pass it off as my own, or use it to illustrate my article or as the cover of my magazine. To do those things, I have to get your permission—you have to grant me the right.

In many cases, this "permission" or transfer of rights becomes a commercial arrangement: if I want to use your picture on the cover of my magazine, you might agree to give me the right to do so if I were to pay you a certain amount of money, for instance. That's the basis for professional editorial photography.

By posting your picture above, I'm acting in good faith by presuming that, because you're a TOP reader and you left a link to it as a comment on my blog, you won't object to me posting it. But I still only have the right to do so because you've (implicity) granted it to me. I post a lot of pictures on TOP because I assume, according to my best judgement and "best guess," that the rights owner won't mind. But that's often just a guess. If you now send me an email saying, "Hey! I never explicitly gave you permission to post my photo. Remove it from your website right now," I would do so.

Clear?

In my years of writing TOP, I've only received requests to remove pictures twice. In both cases I complied.

Where people go astray in copyright is usually because a) they think the photographer's or rights holder's rights are unlimited, or b) they think the photographer doesn't have (or shouldn't have(!)) rights he or she does legally have.

An example of the first: let's say I find a picture by a stranger on Flickr. It's labeled, clearly, "Copyright 2103 by Joseph Blow, all rights reserved." I then copy that photograph, post it on TOP, and write a three-paragraph critique of it. The photographer finds out, is furious, and contacts me stating in strong terms that I've used his photograph without permission, that it's copyrighted, and that I must take it down immediately.

Guess what? Legally, he does not have the right to force me to take it down. Fair Use allows me to reproduce or publish other peoples' work for the purpose of commentary or criticism. I have the legal right to post his picture on my blog if I'm writing about it and discussing it directly. (As a practical matter, if someone is angry and threatening legal action, I'd probably take the picture down, but that would just be to avoid legal entangement, not because I don't have the right to do what I did.)

In this case, the photographer has assumed his rights are unlimited, and trump every other legal consideration.

In another case, say I took a portrait of a kid down the street for pay. Her parents paid me for the portrait shoot and bought two prints. A year later, I become aware that the parents have let their best friend use the portrait for a cover of a brochure advertising his business. When I request payment for this additional use of the picture, they become outraged and claim I am extorting their friend. In their view, they paid for the portrait, they paid for the print, it's of their daughter, and they assume they own it, lock, stock and barrel.

As you probably know, they are wrong—the photographer still owns the rights to the picture, even when it was taken on commission and even if the parents bought prints. In this case, they have assumed the photographer does not have rights he in fact has.

The cypress tree thing is a different issue altogether—trademark, not copyright.

Disclaimer: I am not a copyright lawyer or an expert in copyright law.

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Ozzie Sweet: To my various interlocutors who are anxious for me to treat of Ozzie Sweet: I regret to say that, until I was introduced to him by a kind correspendent several weeks ago, I had never heard of him. That is mere ignorance, and mea culpa; any photographer eulogized in the Times is obviously a gentleman of renown. I apologize that Yr. Hmbl. Host cannot be a commentator on his life or passing, but for some things you must turn elsewhere.

Sony A58 top view

New Sonys: Just out are two new Sony digital cameras, one an SLT (the A58), and one a member of the NEX family (the NEX-3n). Both are more toward the entry-level end of their respective ranges.

The 2014 Mazda 6: Back at the Milwaukee Auto Show yesterday (for four hours of solitary happy wandering and poking about), I tried to support my comment about the Mazda 6 being a particularly good-looking new modern sedan (translation into English: saloon). I photographed it from all angles (the battery in the Dragoon was depleted, so I took the OM-D), and discovered something odd: it doesn't photograph well.

I'm sure many of the professionals in the audience are aware of the fundamental mystery of models...namely, that the camera "loves" some people and is not so kind to others. Well, the same is true of cars, apparently. I compared my visual impression of the Mazda 6 to my photographs of it again and again, and there's no doubt: it looks better in the sheet metal than it does in pictures. I tried, but all of my attempts fell short (and some fell flat). See it for yourself when you can; it's a standout.

The color, by the way, is "Blue Reflex," and it's also lovely. And also not quite reproduced here accurately, but that's my fault.

Local news: Not only has "Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America" opened at the Milwaukee Art Museum, but I learned recently that MAM has moved quickly in replacing departing photo curator Lisa Hostetler, whose major show "Street Seen" was such a success. (The excellent book, Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940-1959, which we wrote about a time or two, is out of print but still available.) "Color Rush" is in part her parting gift. (I'll be touring the show in March with a most excellent guide. Also, a book is upcoming from Aperture. It's available for preorder
now, for an April availability date, and can be purchased now at the museum.)

Our new curator is Lisa Sutcliffe, who joins us from SFMoMA. Local photo people are of course using the inevitable shorthand "old Lisa" and "new Lisa," like that television show about the Christines, but in fact both are young. Lisa H., whose departure was described as "a kick in the stomach" by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, is the new McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.

We welcome Lisa S. and wish her well, and are hopeful her tenure here will have as much vitality as her predecessor's.

Minimalist masterpiece: I'm in the middle of streaming the surviving hour+ of Dennis Johnson's 1959 minimalist composition "November," lost for many decades and resurrected recently by the yeoman efforts of Kyle Gann and others. A tip from my friend Bobby B Bobby B of course. It's at Irritable Hedgehog. Have a listen if you're interested in Ur-minimalism, and read the fascinating tale.

More anon,

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Karl: "From a Coastal Homes magazine interview with Ozzie Sweet: 'Ozzie Sweet is the Babe Ruth of Photographers,' said Chuck Solomon of Sports Illustrated. 'Ozzie is the DiMaggio of his craft; he makes it look easy when in fact, there were none like him,' said Marty Appel, baseball author, historian and TV producer. And I agree. He was the best photo illustrator I've ever seen. I first noticed his work on the cover of Reader's Digest if I remember correctly; a shot of kids on a toboggan in mid-air flying over a hill with expressions out of Norman Rockwell. He was my benchmark for how good photo illustration could be when done really well."

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Well, the campaign was a success, the book was published, and it's on my desk as I write. Harold is a humanist—a "people person"—and the book is a fine, honest collection of black-and-white pictures in mid-century style and in the humanist tradition. I don't think there's a bad shot in the book, and every page brings something good to look at. You can see a few pictures from the book at the web page.

Although a man of many accomplishments, this is Harold's first retrospective.

And get a load of those endorsements. Some real heavy hitters speaking up for Harold! Those are what book blurbs should be. Wow. Check out A. D. Coleman's comment—he said it better than I have.

The Paris picture of Peter's that we published on Valentine's Day put me in mind of this nice blog post by Harold Feinstein. It gives us the measure of the man.

Start me upHere are a few other Kickstarter campaigns that have come to my attention recently:

• Waqas Farid started photographing customers at the "dollar store" his father had operated in urban New Jersey for twenty years, as the store faltered in the poor economy. Then, after relocating to Qatar, he realized he could do a parallel project at his uncle's convenience store in rural Pakistan. Waqas needs to reach his goal of $5,000 to fully realize his project, mainly to fund another trip to Pakistan—and he has dreams beyond that as well.

My email has been down all morning following a power outage, but I'll have a couple of illustrations by Waqas to add to this post as soon as I'm back up and running.

• We're too late to help plug this one, but maybe you might want to know about it anyway: "Doctor Popular," a 'zine fanatic, was successful in his Kickstarter campaign to help publish his own 'zine.

• Bruce Wodder, with his colleagues Peter Bosco and Douglas Underdahl, is making a film about the American photographer George Tice. George, if you don't know the name, is an art photographer with many books under his belt who was partly responsible for both the view camera and platinum printing revivals in the 1970s.

This is a film I want to see.

Mike(Thanks to Doug Howk, Richard Sintchak, and Justin Watt)

Ed. Note: As a point of policy, I don't allow people to propose their own pictures for the "Random Excellence" feature or propose their own Kickstarter projects for a mention on TOP. I get more than 100 emails a week asking me to help promote peoples' work, projects, or products, and we publish an average of 18 posts a week. That should make it easy to understand why we can't help everybody, no matter how deserving the work might be.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)Featured Comments from:

Richard: "I kicked in on Feinstein's book too, and love it! Also contributed to Bill Schwab's kickstarter project too (and alerted Mike to it though not sure if it was my email and/or others that helped). Hope it gets funded so I can get out there and attend a Photostock some day."

Mike replies: My usual policy when multiple readers send the same tip is to thank only the first one by name. But I'm grateful for all tips, and all tipsters...so thanks to you too.

Bill Bresler: "I just kicked in a contribution for Bill Schwab's project. Not only is he a great photographer, he's a heck of a human being. His annual Photostock, which I attended for the first time, is a great gathering of photographers of all stripes and formats. I'm a newspaper photographer for about 60 hours a week and I like to think that my personal work is art. Photostock recharged my batteries. I still feel it."

Monday, 21 May 2012

Does this mean mirrorless has made it to prime time? Andy Kowalczyk tells me that on the most recent episode of the TV show "Person of Interest," the (anti-?) hero is seen doing telephoto surveillance with what appears to be a NEX. (Could just be product placement, I suppose. Sony's reach is spidery.)

And you thought the M Monochrom was radical: Zeke P.E. [sic] of Spectral Instruments discusses the 1110s camera in a recent video. B&W only, 95 millimeter square sensor, 112 MP, "amazing" dynamic range. He wants your opinion as to which photographers they should give one to to test.

UPDATE:Ctein wants to be nominated. Who better? He has the technical chops, and, as he says, Zeke "looks and sounds just like my kind of guy." And then he can write all about it here on TOP. Let's email them and nominate him!

For the lens fanatic who has (almost) everything: Paul Hawkwood writes that there's a 6mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor fisheye for sale in England. Cost? A cool £100,000 ($161,000). There are probably cellphone cameras with 6mm lenses, but this has too much coverage and is a tad too big and—at 5200 grams (about eleven and a half pounds)—heavy for a cellphone. Too bad it won't cover 95x95mm.

Perfectly natural thing for a guy to do: James Maher found himself with a dead X100 on his hands. So he did what anyone would do under the circumstances: he took it apart.

They don't need breaks and they're never late to work:Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Canon is moving toward full robotic assembly of cameras and could have automated production lines up and running within three years (cameras and lenses are still currently made by people).

Low-light lawyers: Scott Paris is enthusiastic about the high ISO performance of his new OM-D. He took this picture at the graduation ceremony of the Michigan State University College of Law. It's a straight out-of-camera JPEG, ISO 8000, 1/60th sec., 150mm.

Admit it, you knew this was coming: The TIME breastfeeding cover as a meme. Sigh. Lynn Burdekin passed this link along.

Proof that some people have too much money: A rare 1923 Leica 0-Series camera (that still works!) sold in Vienna for €2.16 million ($2.8 million). The buyer is anonymous (probably hiding from his wife).

This probably isn't related, it just seems that way:The lowdown on Leica pricing. This will interest a subset of those reading, but I confess I didn't read it! So I'm not really sure I'm allowed to recommend it. Caveat emptor.

Time machine: Silver & Light by Ian Ruhter. This is a Vimeo video that can also be seen at this link. Longish, but cool. Probably best watched late at night rather than at work when you have stuff to do. Carsten Bockermann gets the thanks for calling this to our attention first, but several others did too.

Might as well jump: John Hogg sent this. Clare Newton "has been photographing thousands of children and adults from all walks of life across London, then will creatively combine the images to make a giant panorama photograph over 1 kilometre in length, with everyone appearing to jump simultaneously. The photographic montage consists of over 109,000 images of people across jumping against scenic backdrops which have been seamlessly stitched together." It will be the world's longest-ever photograph, complete with the Guinness Book of World Records there to put their seal on it.

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Featured Comment by Geoff Wittig: "I feel sad (I guess) about robots assembling cameras; I enjoyed the comforting illusion that skilled craftsmen wearing leather aprons and monocle loups were putting them together with loving care. As of a year or two ago there was a fascinating Canon video online demonstrating the assembly of their 500mm ƒ/4 IS lens. Yep, just one white-gloved craftsman, carefully fitting those immaculate jewel-like glass and fluorite elements into their seats and putting the whole thing together. I actually own that lens (please don't ask me how often I use it!) and, if possible, the video made me even more paranoid about dropping it."

Featured Comment by David L: "Mike, Zeke of Spectral Instruments said he's a mechanical engineer (like me). The P.E. after his name is for Professional Engineer, a legally recognized certification of engineering skills and knowledge based on passing a technical exam. It includes multiple disciplines in engineering."

Featured Comment by Winsor: "That 'Person of Interest' camera sure looked like a Nikon 1 to me. It makes sense considering it has a 2.7 multiplier for the focal length."

Featured Comment by Ctein: "Regarding the OMD's high-ISO performance, I downloaded the ISO 2000 and 6400 RAW files from dpreview and ran out some 17x22 prints of them. The ISO 2000 photograph is extremely fine-grained as it is; I would be happy with it for portfolio quality work. I could make it essentially grainless with very little noise reduction applied. It looks considerably better at ISO 2000 than my Pen does at ISO 800.

"As for ISO 6400, it's actually good. It's grainy, but fine-grained, at least on the level of 35mm Tri-X with one-stop pulled development. Probably better than that. In other words, acceptable in even a 17x22 print so long as you don't mind seeing grain. With a moderately small amount of noise reduction applied, not enough to compromise subtle fine detail in the least, the visible grain drops down to about the level of the ISO 2000 file. It's quite extraordinary. I'm not sure if there would ever be a situation where I would be doing portfolio-relevant work at ISO 6400 (maybe if I chanced across another auroral display) but if something really needed that treatment, I'd be willing to add it to my portfolio. And for more casual use, it's utterly acceptable.

"Most importantly, I'm seeing no evidence of large-scale, low spatial frequency mottling or variations in tone or color, which was the real killer trying to use the Pen above ISO 800. I am impressed."

Friday, 04 May 2012

I don't often go to the dpreview forums (I was banned long ago, which has turned out to be a time-saver), but this thread had me giggling.

The OP implicated our friend John Sexton in a matter about which I doubt very much the real John has an opinion. Several people point out that the article under disputation (from L-L) was written by one Richard Sexton, not John Sexton; shortly thereafter, another participant, unarmed even with the clues provided him in the short and simple thread up to that point, waded in to ask belligerently who John Sexton is and why anyone should care what he thinks. Surprisingly, he immediately found an equally clueless kindred spirit, who helpfully provided John's website.

By this time, I've got the giggles. It's become a little like an American political discussion, which is to say, like a bunch of lunatics shouting into the air past each others' ears.

Okay, it's not that funny. But sometimes, some things just hit you that way, you know? Each time someone in the thread accused the L-L writer of not having his facts straight it made me giggle more. I mean, considering the gang of 'em hadn't quite managed to sort out between them exactly who it was they were talking about.

Later, another person answered the same earlier question by again posting John's website. Does no one who participates in these threads read them?

When someone concluded, talking about the L-L article again, "Writing and layout is awful. Conclusion is wrong," and the post immediately following says, "Thank you. Going to read," well, it was a good thing I didn't have a mouthful of coffee....*

The real John Sexton with his inadequate Micro 4/5 camera.

Too funny. Poor John—he's been imputed to have controversial opinions about Micro 4/3 and had his good judgment soundly slandered. And yet I'm reasonably certain "his" alleged opinions would come as news to him.

Mike

UPDATE 5/8/12:It appears the dpreview thread has been deleted; I'm told John had entered the discussion there, and I'm sure that once he brought it to the attention of the moderators they preferred to correct the OP's error. —Ed. (Thanks to S. Chris for pointing this out.)

*The second post was not responding to the one above it. It just appeared to.

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Featured Comment by [the real] John Sexton: "Mike, Things have been insanely busy around here the past few days, and I have not been able to check emails much. This morning when I was attempting to catch up on things I became aware of the article I allegedly wrote on the Luminous Landscape, and also found your post.

"Indeed, I don't have any opinions on the merits of the Micro 4/3 format. I likely may have ideas to communicate about the not-so-micro 4x5" film format that I still use. I appreciate you coming to my 'aid' here on The Online Photographer.

"It brings to mind one of my favorite quotations...a statement that the noted painter and photographer Charles Sheeler made to Ansel Adams many years ago: 'Isn't it amazing how photography has advanced without improving!'"

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Friday, 13 April 2012

Well, damn, I deserve what I get for mentioning taxes in a lead-in. Let's pretend I didn't do that, okay? It makes me feel kind of useless to spend my time not publishing comments.

More on topic, Jim Nash mentioned that there are some large JPEGs of Lewis Hine pictures at shorpy.com, as indeed there are. Including many which I've never seen before, which is exciting for me.

Those of you who don't visit Shorpy, or have never heard of it, might not know that the site itself is named after the subject of a Lewis Hine photograph:

December 1910. Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars.(Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)

Shorpy Higginbotham died in a mining accident, aged 31.

Poking around the Hine photographs on Shorpy, I was interested to see how the site's community dives into researching the pictures and their elements. Consider this one—the commenters have figured out the real name and age of the "newsie," the location of the store, and even the fact that the toilet paper in the window was made by the Waldorf Company, whose employee education program was the ancestor of the still-thriving Waldorf Schools.

That led me naturally enough to the site of Joe Manning, "author, historian and geneologist," whose site I have actually surfed past before, looking for pictures, without realizing its full import. Joe's "Lewis Hine Project" involves tracking down what happened to the subjects of some of Hine's pictures.

February 1910. Addie Card,12 years old, anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill, Vermont. Girls in mill say she is ten years. She admitted to me she was twelve; that she started during school vacation and would 'stay.' (Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.)

One of Lewis Hine's most famous child-laborer photographs is of Addie Card, an "anemic little spinner" in a Vermont cotton mill. A book author, Elizabeth Winthrop, wrote a novel inspired by the photograph, imagining the life of the girl in the picture, who she named "Grace." But she became curious about the identity of the real person in the photograph, and asked Joe Manning to help her find out more about her.

Joe Manning's account of several months of detective work starts here.

It's not a fast read, but his search certainly succeeded—he was able to track Addie Card through marriages, divorce, a lost child, and all the way to her headstone (she died in 1993). He met a number of her descendants and uncovered several later pictures of her, and one possible earlier one, including a picture of her as an old woman.

Based on Joe's researches, Elizabeth Winthrop wrote a short article for Smithsonian magazine about Addie, which can be found here.

And to think, there are probably similar stories waiting to be uncovered about so many of the pictures on Shorpy...if you've never visited, don't do it when you're in a hurry.

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Featured Comment by Andreas Weber: "From my experience with 'La Diva' in the Stuttgarter Wilhelma I can say that the smell varies a lot in intensity from one flower to the next. And some of it's smaller brethren easily dwarf the 'titan' in that regard ;-) I've been rather close to the big one in July 2008:

[If flower pics be your thang, Andreas has some nice ones on his website. —Ed.]

Added by Andreas 3/20: "It's a good thing that I don't have to pay for traffic on my site. The last two days saw about as much hits as the entire year before."

Featured Comment by J. Robert Lennon: "I was there last night! There's something inspiring about watching hundreds of people show up just to see a flower bloom. And stick their noses into its reeking maw. As soon as we got home my wife threw all her clothes into the laundry and still felt personally tainted when she got up this morning."

Featured Comment by Steve Wolfe: "I shot a timelapse using my D700 a couple years ago of a Titan arum opening at Ohio State University. My wife added titles, stills, and (licensed) music. If you're interested, here's a link to our video on YouTube. By the way, I sat with that smelly thing for six hours to shoot this. After a while the odor kind of grows on you :-) ."

Featured Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "I don't want to think what sort of pollinator that flower is built for. From the smell, apparently a predator of some sort, too. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be there when it shows up!"

Mike replies:It is clearly meant to be pollinated by zombies. I wouldn't hang around it at night, just to be safe.

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Featured Comment by Jamie Pillers: "Was the photographer's name 'Elmer'? He didn't mumble something about pesky wabbits, did he?"

Friday, 09 December 2011

Most end-of-the-year picture sets consist of pictures taken in that year. This one's a little different...it consists of 82 pictures from a set of negatives found years ago in a thrift shop. From the available evidence, these pictures will turn 100 years old in the coming New Year—the poster (who, as far as I can tell, is anonymous as well) figures they were taken in 1912. The number of stars on this flag is one of the clues.

Not only do I find some of the pictures fascinating—snapshots they might be, but whoever took them was actually a pretty good photographer—but I think it's telling that they're now "on exhibit" worldwide after being scanned and posted on the web. That part, at least, is very 2012.

Mike(Thanks to Lynn Burdekin in Sydney)

P.S. Warning: the parent site where these pictures are posted is a bit sketchy, and admits to being vandalized regularly for its extreme political views. I don't see how any reader looking at the pictures could be harmed by this in any way, but I figured you should know.

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Featured Comment by Alan Anderson: "The sign in one photo gives clues that the photos were taken in the foothills and slopes east of a line connecting Ventura and Santa Barbara California. The courthouse (?) may have been Ventura County. The naval photos were taken either in San Diego or Long Beach California, both ports used then as now by the U.S. Navy. The older Officer wears two stars, at that time the insignia of a Rear Admiral; his cap device shows he is in the U.S. Navy. Obviously a well-to-do family with acreage planted as new orchards and a processing plant. They also have the connections to arrange a visit to part of the Pacific Fleet."

Featured Comment by Kevin Purcell: "The 46 star flag reminds me of the Simpson's episode (3F20, 'Much Apu About Nothing') in which Apu becomes a citizen with Homer administering the citizenship test:

Homer: Please identify this object.

Apu: It appears to be the flag that disappeared from the public library last year.

Homer: Correct. Now, we all know the thirteen stripes are for good luck, but why does the American flag have precisely forty-seven stars?

Apu: Because this particular flag [chuckling] is ridiculously out of date! The library must have purchased it during the brief period in 1912 after New Mexico became a state but before Arizona did.

Homer: Uh...partial credit.

"So it's a shame it didn't have 47 stars then we could precisely date it :-)

"It's often interesting how much extra date or time info (e.g. from shadow angles) you can get from ephemera in unknown photos."

Monday, 17 October 2011

Kirk Tuck announced on Friday that after two weeks away from his popular blog The Visual Science Lab, he's decided to start back up again today. Good news. Tipping the scale in a positive way were the hundreds of comments and emails he received expressing appreciation and asking him not to quit.

Kirk tells me he's still going to write a monthly column for TOP, which I hope he can do.

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Saturday, 08 October 2011

"In the memorials to Steven P. Jobs this week, Apple’s co-founder was compared with the world’s great inventor-entrepreneurs: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell. Yet virtually none of the obituaries mentioned the man Jobs himself considered his hero, the person on whose career he explicitly modeled his own: Edwin H. Land, the genius domus of Polaroid Corporation and inventor of instant photography."

How to impress womenMeanwhile, I got the following Jobs tale from my pal Pete:

Long ago I spent a workday with Mr. Jobs during the "Lisa" release, doing photo work. Sometime during the day this story came out and it was memorable.

Steve was in New York during the previous week. He notoriously didn’t carry a wallet or keys and so forth. (For most of our day he was in his socks—no shoes, although he put a tie on for a couple of shots.) He found himself in his hotel’s bar and was in conversation with two nice women. They treated Steve to drinks. But when it came his turn to buy, he didn’t have any money. The two women didn’t know who he was, just a nice guy who had no money. He told the ladies the he was good for the cost of a round of drinks as he would get some money from his traveling companions.

The women were unsure of his promise but paid for the drinks. At his next turn, he again promised money from his friends; they were late, but would arrive soon. He told the women that he and a friend (Woz) started a computer company in California and that he was paid well and was good for the drink money. The women were more leery at this point about fronting money to this guy with promises and no wallet. Then Steve remembered that his photo was to be on the cover of the current TIME Magazine. He told the women that if they would follow him out to the corner newsstand (in the rain) he would prove to them that he was good for the drink money and was not BS-ing about his work in California. Well, they went out into the rain and saw his photo on the cover of TIME—and the three of them went back to the hotel bar, where the two women bought the next round.

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Featured Comment by Avram Levi: "Playboy re-published an interview with Steve Jobs from the 1980s. At one point he talks about Dr. Edwin Land: 'You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company—which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. So Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don’t understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.'"

Featured Comment by Michael O'Donoghue: "Well—we all know what happened to Polaroid...."

Friday, 30 September 2011

Everybody's a comedian photographer: Comedian Louis CK says, "I take a lot of pictures. I am very, very into photography...I'm going to show you all the equipment I brought with me. I'm not showing off here. I'm not rich. I just spend all my money on cameras. It's important to me." Read about his "main dude" (favorite camera). (Hint: "It's not even an SLR. you have to line up images in the rangefinder and hope for the best.")

Thieves with very good taste in lenses:Thieves broke into the headquarters of the high-end cameramaker Alpa in Switzerland on Wednesday night and made off with dozens of Rodenstock, Schneider, and Alpa/Zeiss lenses. If you come across any offers for Alpa lenses for sale, be sure to check the serial number against Alpa's stolen merchandise list. We hope Alpa gets its lenses back, in which case a Swiss jail will soon be hosting some discerning optical connoisseurs.

Gottlieb online: The Library of Congress has posted a large number of historical jazz photographs by the late William P. Gottlieb on its Flickr pages. We linked to Adam Bernstein's NPR obituary when Bill died in '06.

Cab Calloway by Bill Gottlieb

DxOmark likes what it sees: DxOmark has evaluated the new Nikon J1's sensor and compares it favorably (all things considered) with larger ones.

Looking up from lamentations, or why my Canon printer sucks: The Inky Fool traces the ancient origins of the Canon name, and uncovers its connections to his balky printer. We liked this.

Canon's next killer cam: You've probably seen this, with some of the details of the upcoming 5D refresh:

If you can't see the video, try this link. A shame it's a fake! If there's one single camera that is the most loved by passionate photographers, it's probably the 5D in whatever its current iteration is, so the ground-tremors of the coming Mark III are already generating huge interest.

ADDENDUM: Almost forgot this one—it now appears there are two famous vampires in our midst—John Travolta's doppelganger has been found as well, in an old photo described as a ruby glass ambrotype. I don't think the similarity in this case is quite so strong—apparently the seller doesn't either, since he'll let his treasure go for $50,000 instead of the $100,000 the guy with Nicolas Cage's vampire wanted. (Thanks to James for this.)

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Featured Comment by Jeff Glass: "Uh-oh, gush warning. Oh for crying out loud, Louis CK is one of, if not the, best comedians around and now I find out he's also into photography, which is my passion, and shoots film only, as I do, and shoots a Leica, which I do too (M4)! For christ's sake, I LOVE YOU, Louie! A stalker is born...."

Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "The Cab Calloway portrait it just a classic, capturing all the joyfulness and vivacity of his music. Hi de ho.

"P.S. Cab is obviously thinking about the 5D Mk III."

Featured Comment by John: "Thanks for the link on the origins of the name Canon—made me laugh. :-)"

Featured Comment by Matt: "Since you've been posting links to photos of strangely familiar looking faces, I thought I'd send you doppelganger #3 from the USC Digital Library: Sean Penn as a bunny hunter."

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Think there's no obesity epidemic? Colorado, currently the skinniest State in America, would have been the fattest had they reported this year's figures just 20 years ago. Heard that one on the evening news.

Awesome infographics: Look, ye mighty, and tremble—at how, when it comes to the size of their photo assets, Flickr dwarfs the Library of Congress—and Facebook dwarfs Flickr. (Check "The World's Largest Photo Libraries.")

What country springs to mind when you think about child exploitation? Probably not Canada—but British Columbia has the most permissive child labor laws in the world, says Joel Bakan in The Globe and Mail. Children as young as 12 can work any job except in a mine or a bar, at any time except during school hours. That's worse than Afganistan or Haiti, says Bakan. Most at risk: children of recent immigrants.

Super Canon rumor: We're only three days from Nikon Day (big announcement expected on Wednesday) but the Canon 1Ds Mark 4 (question: will it or won't it be "IV"?) might be announced in October—with (or so the rumors have it) a full-frame 56 million pixel sensor. Also coming, the 5D Mark III, and possibly a cheaper full-frame DSLR with a lower pixel count than the new 5D3.

It ain't the '90s anymore: The once-hip Raiders have lost their mojo, along with the status of their swag as pop fashion, but the major U.S. sports team losing fans the fastest, according to 24/7 Wall Street, is the Cleveland Indians baseball team, which has lost 56% of its fans since 2000 (measured by attendance). But even that pales next to the once-popular beer people no longer drink: Michelob, sales of which are down 72% just since 2006.

Who'd a' Thunk? Two things you'd never guess are good to buy from Amazon: diapers and auto parts. No kidding, Amazon's deals on both are top-rated, according to CBS Money Watch. Amazon sells more than four million auto parts, most through third-party vendors, many of which are cheaper than they are anyplace else. And, with a "subscription," diapers from Amazon are less expensive than they are at Wal-Mart. Things to avoid buying at Amazon: groceries, home furnishings, and household cleaners.

The fastest car you can buy is a...Nissan: Yup. In case you've been wondering, the 2012 Nissan GT-R Black Edition is the fastest production car you can buy new in the U.S.*, faster than any Ferrari, Porsche, or Lamborghini: zero to sixty in 3.1 seconds. A 2012 model, it's been available for most of 2011—for a mere $91,000, far below the cost of many "name" supercars. Got this from Yahoo!, if I recall.

Blink and miss it: Leica Camera can't keep the M9-P in stock. B&H got a small shipment in on Wednesday, and they were gone by Saturday.

*There has been dispute over this in the comments, as I knew there would be. I don't buy it. It's too much of a stretch to call either the SSC or the Veyron "production cars." The SSC is hand-built in the dozens and at full throttle sucks down a gallon of fuel every fifteen seconds. And according to Wikipedia, the total output of Veyrons was 300, which you just might be able to call "production" volume...except that was over six years. Total sales in 2011? Nine. And according to Jeff they cost 2.7 million dollars each.

Not production cars, sez me. There are always going to be one-offs, race cars, engineering daydreams, the toys of the überrich. The list I read included only real cars that mortal people actually buy to use as cars.

But you can have the asterisk if you want it, s'okay with me...(but before you go away, have a look at this—thanks to Tee for the link. Note that that wasn't even the Black Edition.)

"Open Mike" is a series of (mostly) off-topic posts by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appears now and again on Sunday.

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